Transfigurations

Welcome to Transfigurations! This blog is intended to serve the orthodox Anglican community and the wider Christian community. We pray that all that is posted here will be faithful to the Scriptures as the inspired word of God, speak the truth in love, edify, bless and transform this local body of Christ, and be an impetus for revival, repentance, prayer and intercession!

Friday, March 10, 2017

Anglican Unscripted Episode 274

Mar 10, 2017Anglican Unscripted is the only video newscast in the Anglican Church. Each Episode Kevin, George, Allan and Gavin bring you news and prospective from around the globe. Please Donate - http://anglican.ink/donate

Wednesday, March 08, 2017

GAFCON Chairman Okoh's March 2017 letter

To the Faithful of the GAFCON movement and friends from Archbishop Nicholas Okoh, Metropolitan and Primate of All Nigeria and Chairman, the GAFCON Primates Council.

My dear people of God,

As I remarked in my last letter, because of our shared history events in the Church of England have a special significance for the whole Anglican Communion. So this month I must comment on the vote by General Synod on 15th February not to ‘take note’ of the House of Bishops report on marriage and sexuality.

A refusal to ‘take note’ is very unusual. Such a motion is usually just a formality preceding further debate. In this case, people on both sides of the argument about sexuality perceived that the report tried to face two ways. Thankfully, it recommended that there should be no change to the doctrine of marriage, but it held out the possibility that could change in the future and that for the present, in line with present practice, there should be ‘maximum freedom’ pastorally within the existing legal framework.

Following this rebuke to the House of Bishops, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York have issued a letter which seems to entrench the contradiction. They call for ‘a radical new Christian inclusion in the Church’ which not only draws on the traditional sources of Anglican authority, but also on what they describe as a ‘21st century understanding of being human and of being sexual.’

But the inclusion the gospel offers has always been radical. All are included in fallen human nature and yet all may be included in the Kingdom of God through repentance and faith in Christ crucified. While we are included in the Kingdom solely through God’s grace, this is not cheap grace and there is a great gulf between the morality of the Bible and the neo-pagan sexual morality that is now dominant in the West. We need to be as clear today as the apostles were to the churches of the New Testament that new life in Christ means a radical break with the practices and lifestyle of the world.

However, some Bishops have been quick to seize the initiative with their own interpretation of ‘a radical new Christian inclusion’. For example the Bishop of Manchester has called for ‘much more than the maximum freedom’ recommended by the House of Bishops report while the Bishop of Selby (a suffragan of York Diocese) has claimed "The majority view of the Synod therefore is that we need to explore a more creative way ahead for faithful human relationships rather than remaining where we are".

The effect of the vote in General Synod depends upon how it is interpreted. It could have been an opportunity to reaffirm apostolic teaching on marriage and sexuality, but the Archbishops’ talk of radical inclusion and a 21st century understanding has given great encouragement to those who want to bring the Church of England into line with the values of secular society.

The result is that the historic and biblical mind of the Church, as expressed by the bishops of the Anglican Communion in Lambeth Resolution I.10 of 1998, has now been downgraded to something provisional and secondary. We owe much to the Christians in Great Britain and not least the Church of England, so it is very distressing to see such confusion which is now at greater risk of being spread through the rest of the Communion.

Yet there is still hope. As Gafcon UK have already commented, ‘The confusion created by the General Synod vote on 15th February makes it abundantly clear that a new vision is now needed of what Anglican Christianity in England can and should be.’ Gafcon exists to provide a new vision of vibrant biblical partnership in mission for the Anglican Communion as a whole. No faithful Anglicans will be left behind or abandoned.

In these troubled times it is good to recover the biblical perspective that ‘here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come’ (Hebrews 13:14). Our defining centre is not a place, but a person, the Lord Jesus Christ and our ultimate authority is not a human institution, but the Word of God. We gathered in Jerusalem in 2008 in the place that witnessed the mighty acts of God in the death and resurrection of his Son and from where the Apostles were sent out to all the world. We shall return next year with great thankfulness to God for his continued favour, but our eyes will be upon the heavenly Jerusalem, the City of God, of which we are members by grace and we eagerly look forward to its full revealing when Jesus returns.

Meanwhile, let us always keep in prayer those who are suffering hardship in our Anglican family. The Church of Nigeria and other Anglicans around the world have recently sent funds to support the northern Kenyan diocese of Marsabit and part of the Church of Uganda in the grip of a severe drought affecting the whole region with many refugees. Please pray for rain and God’s supply. Here in Nigeria we are also sending relief materials to victims of the Southern Kaduna killings, which are still happening.

Finally, I want to record that the Church of Nigeria regrettably lost by death one of the courageous bishops in the North East axis, the Most Revd Emmanuel Kana Mani. He will be buried on 15th March 2017 at Maiduguri.

The Most Revd Nicholas D. Okoh
Archbishop, Metropolitan and Primate of All Nigeria and Chairman, the GAFCON Primates Council

Tuesday, March 07, 2017

Pro-Life Counseling Becomes Illegal in France
...These days France is guillotining free speech. It is forbidding anybody from trying to convince women not to abort their unborn child. No information may be tendered on the internet or in counseling regarding potential negative consequences of abortion. The latter are considered lies and if caught spreading them, one faces 2 years in prison and up to $37,000 (€30,000) in fines.

Jean Frédéric Poisson, the deputy for the department of the Yvelines, president of the small Christian-Democrat party, and a presidential candidate who unfortunately only got 2 percent in the primaries last November—though he is the most consistent, most pro-life and most Catholic candidate out there—spoke out against this new law which passed from the national assembly to the French Senate and back. As he pointed out, if there is freedom of thought, there must also be freedom of speech...

No, Mr Fabricant. Traditional Anglicans do not behead unbelievers If you happened to visit my church on a Sunday, here is what you would find: a group of people of all ages – we don't do age segregation – participating in a worship service in the historic Anglican tradition. After the service you would enjoy coffee and tea, along with plenty of fellowship and laughter. If you happened to turn up on the first Sunday of the month, we would ask you to join us for lunch – an invitation that is open to all in our community. We would also invite you to come to our all-age games night on a Friday, where we muck around playing table tennis and various other amusements.

But we also have a dark side. Our two big secrets you might say. One is that we are, as a congregation, committed to the idea of what is generally known as "traditional marriage". The other is that in the courtyard at the back, we perform executions of those whom we regard as heretics, using such methods as chopping their heads off, burning them alive and tying them to pillars and blowing them up. You may have even seen the videos uploaded to YouTube.

Okay so I made some of that up. Did you spot which bits? Yes, we really do have a service with a liturgy based on Cranmer's Book of Common Prayer together with lots of psalms. We really do play a lot of table tennis. And – along with the entire Anglican Church until just a few years back – we really do believe that marriage is an institution designed to be between one man and woman for life.

It's the executions that we don't do. We do baptisms, I'll admit to that, but so far no killings. In fact, I can assure readers that we have never executed anyone who disagrees with us, nor do we have any plans to do so. Not even those who disagree with us on the marriage issue.

All that might come as something of a surprise to the “Conservative” MP for Litchfield, Michael Fabricant (I surround the word Conservative with speech marks only because there is currently no emoticon that encapsulates the idea of a person who claims to be something, but is in reality the exact opposite).In a recent article for the Daily Telegraph, he wrote this about the current battles over same-sex “marriage” going on in the Church of England:

“Perhaps the Church should take a tough line on its less progressive elements: get with the times or get out… Simply opting for more of the same for the sake of unity amongst a diverse Communion – some of whose views differ little from ISIL – is a choice of quantity over quality.”

Psychiatry Professor: 'Transgenderism' Is Mass Hysteria Similar To 1980s-Era Junk Science ...Clearly, the transgender phenomenon is the tip of the spear of the LGBT movement, greatly energized by the Supreme Court decision on same-sex marriage that includes in the definition of liberty the right of people to “define and express their identity.” For the LGBT movement this literally includes the right to decide one’s gender, to claim the rights of an alternative gender (since gender is malleable, there are choices other than simply male or female), have the choice acknowledged by society as a civil right, and ultimately become accepted as a conventional lifestyle.

However, transgenderism as a normative lifestyle may be a hard sell. While fair-minded people can agree that gays or people with gender confusion should not be discriminated against, the general public doesn’t appear to be ready to accept gender as simply a social construct or that people can be whatever gender they choose. These contentions, the conceptual foundation of transgenderism, fly in the face of reality: the biological difference between the sexes...

Albert Mohler: The Shack—The Missing Art of Evangelical Discernment ...The most controversial aspects of The Shack‘s message have revolved around questions of universalism, universal redemption, and ultimate reconciliation. Jesus tells Mack: “Those who love me come from every system that exists. They were Buddhists or Mormons, Baptists or Muslims, Democrats, Republicans and many who don’t vote or are not part of any Sunday morning or religious institutions.” Jesus adds, “I have no desire to make them Christian, but I do want to join them in their transformation into sons and daughters of my Papa, into my brothers and sisters, my Beloved.”

Mack then asks the obvious question — do all roads lead to Christ? Jesus responds, “Most roads don’t lead anywhere. What it does mean is that I will travel any road to find you.”

Given the context, it is impossible not to draw essentially universalistic or inclusivistic conclusions about Young’s meaning. “Papa” chides Mack that he is now reconciled to the whole world. Mack retorts, “The whole world? You mean those who believe in you, right?” “Papa” responds, “The whole world, Mack.”...

Less violent, but still disruptive, attempts were made to shut down Rick Santorum and Michael Johns at Cornell, Christina Hoff Sommers at Oberlin, Georgetown and elsewhere. and other conservative speakers.

Finally, there is widespread condemnation even from the left, particularly after Middlebury.

Yet we have been covering shout-downs and violence directed at speakers on campus for several years, but for the most part these events never gained national media attention much less condemnation from the left. Because the speakers who were disrupted were mostly Jewish Israelis and supporters of Israel. Not all those shouted down or attacked were Jewish, but all were deemed supportive of Zionism, the recognition of Israel as the nation state of the Jews...

Monday, March 06, 2017

Albert Mohler: Expository Preaching—The Antidote to Anemic Worship ...Expository preaching is central, irreducible, and nonnegotiable to the Bible’s mission of authentic worship that pleases God. John Stott’s simple declaration states the issue boldly: “Preaching is indispensable to Christianity.” More specifically, preaching is indispensable to Christian worship—and not only indispensable, but central.

The centrality of preaching is the theme of both testaments of Scripture. In Nehemiah 8 we find the people demanding that Ezra the scribe bring the book of the law to the assembly. Ezra and his colleagues stand on a raised platform and read from the book. When he opens the book to read, the assembly rises to its feet in honor of the word of God and respond, “Amen, Amen!”

Interestingly, the text explains that Ezra and those assisting him “read from the book, from the law of God, translating to give the sense so that they understood the reading” (Neh 8:8). This remarkable text presents a portrait of expository preaching...

Drug overdose fatality rate higher than suicides, cars, guns
...The overall number of opioid overuse deaths quadrupled during the same time period, and in 2015 opioids killed more than 33,000 people — higher than ever before. States that Trump won like West Virginia, Kentucky, and Ohio were hardest hit by fatal drug overdoses in 2015. Trump held a meeting in Feb. at the White House on how to respond to the opioid epidemic...

Resting place of the Ark of the Covenant to be site of new archaeological investigation ...Several theories have been offered for its disappearance and current location, with claims made for a secret resting places on Mount Nebo, in Ethiopia and even Warwickshire. But a team led by Israel Finkelstein and Christophe Nicolle from Tel Aviv University and Thomas Römer from the College de France seems confident of making a major discovery on the site of the ancient temple at Kiryat Ye’arim.

“The place is important for several reasons,” Finkelstein told The Times of Israel. “It’s a large, central site in the Jerusalem hills that hasn’t been studied until now. It may be the only key site in Judah that hasn’t undergone a systematic archaeological excavation.”

The dig is set to commence in early August and continue through September...

As the Islamic State is pushed out of areas in Iraq and Syria that they controlled since 2014, archaeologists are being given the chance to study new discoveries. It is thought that the Islamic State has ransacked various ancient tombs and landmarks to collect valuables to sell on the black market in order to fund their operation...

Bishop Saliba said the church accepts converts only after confirming that their faith is genuine.

Muslim refugees are turning to Jesus despite it being extremely risky. Radwan was once stabbed while he was coming home from the church. The attackers were Syrians from his own tribe. His wife still wears a hijab outside of church for her safety...